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Manual vs scheduled Do Not Disturb settings

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Q: If I switch Do Not Disturb on from the Control Center, will it stay on until I manually switch it off or will it automatically switch off at the end of the next scheduled “on” period?

For example, if I have scheduled Do Not Disturb to be on from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m., and at 5 p.m. I manually switch Do Not Disturb on through Control Centre, I would expect that I would have a quiet phone until 8 a.m., but what happens then? Does my iPhone remain in Do Not Disturb mode, or does it switch off automatically? I would assume the behaviour is similar with manually switching Do Not Disturb off?

- Stephen

A: The simple answer is that the scheduledDo Not Disturb setting will always override the manual controls. This makes sense when you think about it, as for most users it’s generally far worse to miss an important notification than to have their device go off unexpectedly.

So in the example above, turning on the Do Not Disturb feature—either through Control Center or by toggling the “Manual” option in the iOS Settings app—will only leave it on until the next point at which your schedule would switch it OFF: 8 a.m. in this case.

Similarly, if you were to toggle Do Not Disturb OFF before your scheduled 8 a.m. time, it would still come back on at 10 p.m. that evening.

Technically speaking, the scheduled Do Not Disturb settings are treated as individual times rather than a time window. Do Not Disturb will automatically switch ON at the designated start time and automatically switch OFF at the designated end time; labelling this as “Quiet Hours” makes the feature conceptually easier for most users, but in reality there is nothing inherently special about the time period between these two times. You’re free to toggle Do Not Disturb ON or OFF manually at any time, but when the next scheduled time passes, the setting will always be changed according to the schedule.